What would you do for a year of free chicken wings? How about camping overnight in a parking lot during a cold Secaucus night? That’s what a group of people did for a chance to be among the first 100 to dine at the new Buffalo Wild Wings location in Harmon Meadow – and take home a coupon book worth 52 orders of six wings.

The new restaurant marks close to 1,000 locations across the country for the popular sports bar chain. Located at 470 Harmon Meadow Blvd., it can handle more than 300 customers with a staff of about 120 and enough giant flatscreen TVs to start their own appliance warehouse.

“We’re very happy to be here in town,” said General Manager Robert Fasolino. “We’re very happy to be employing the local community. We plan on being very community driven.”

Repurposed for entertainment

Attending the ribbon cutting ceremony on Dec. 19, officially opening the location for business, was Emanuel Stern, President and Chief Operating Officer of Hartz Mountain Industries, the property developer and landlord.

According to Stern, the 100,000-plus square foot building previously located on the site housed the NBA. “It was an obsolete kind of office building and we moved them, renewed them in a long-term lease elsewhere in the complex.”

_____________ ‘The site is really morphing into as much hospitality and entertainment as it is commercial.’ – Emanuel Stern____________

“We determined that it was better to scrape the building and then repurpose the site,” he continued. In place of the NBA appeared a Red Robin restaurant and Buffalo Wild Wings, with a 170-room hotel yet to come.

“The site is really morphing into as much hospitality and entertainment as it is commercial,” Stern said.

Dedicated wingmen

“We heard that they’re doing the free one-year wings and we had nothing to do,” said Secaucus resident Chris Soto, a fan of Buffalo Wild Wings. “There’s one by my college, the University of Delaware.”

So Soto, along with friends Chirag Patel and Justin De Avila, hunkered down shortly after midnight to be first in line at the new location.

“I did this last year when I was first in Best Buy,” said Patel. “So I kind of wanted to be first again.”

A handful of other customers began to line up around 1 or 1:30. “Everyone started coming at like five,” De Avila said.

By the time the official opening took place at 9 a.m., the line stretched the length of the building, with disappointed customers number 101 and beyond going home wingless.

“We brought our tents and sleeping bags and stuff,” said De Avila proudly, adding, “They made us clean up before the ribbon cutting.”